Access to relevant information is often a major challenge for refugees. The research paper “From Information-Seeking to Information-Asking: Designing RefuGPT, a Chatbot for Ukrainian Refugees in Switzerland” was published in the journal “Digital Government: Research and Practice”.
RefuGPT helps Ukrainian refugees to better understand and navigate the complex bureaucratic processes in Switzerland. Thanks to its two-layer structure and the use of retrieval augmented generation and prompt-based learning, the chatbot enables a transition from laborious “information-seeking” to more intuitive “information-asking”.
The effectiveness and user-friendliness of RefuGPT was evaluated in a realistic study with refugees. Based on the results, design principles and recommendations for future chatbot solutions are proposed.
The authors Kilian Sprenkamp, Sven Eckhardt, Liudmila Zavolokina and Gerhard Schwabe are involved in the project “Government as a Platform: Orchestrating Stakeholders in Crisis Situations through Digital Platforms”, which is funded in the 2nd project call. This project builds on the project “Government as/is a platform”, which was funded as part of the Rapid Action Call “Dealing with emergencies as a result of the war against Ukraine”.